I Don't Remember Restaurant Food
On the meals that are the most memorable, and the importance of feeding people.
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” ― Sophia Loren
I don’t remember restaurant food. I don’t remember what I ate at Windsor Castle after meeting Prince Charles. I don’t remember what I ate at the supper club that an opera singer once took us to, skipping down the alleys in Covent Garden until he found the green door that opened. I don’t remember what kind of pizza we had on the grass in Hyde park, or any of the dishes I served as a waitress on Second Avenue. I don’t remember the details of the food I didn’t make, but I do remember every chapter of my life in tandem with the meals that were made for me, the food I made with my own two hands – the longing and the offering and the satiety.
I remember sitting on a dark windowsill in London drinking whiskey and milk, twenty and lost. I remember the Spanish ballet dancer coming home from a long day of Swan Lake rehearsals, pulling a skillet out from under the stove and showing me how to make a Spanish omelette. I remember sitting at the long wood table in their candlelit kitchen while she sautéed potatoes and chorizo, added eggs and eventually flipped the whole thing out on a plate. I was lonely and starving but her radiant smile gave me hope that one day I might be more like her: radiant and tireless and full.
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